The use of a filled plastic composition for manufacturing functional components is known from the prior art. Such compositions typically comprise a plastic matrix and a filler material.
A high filler material portion is desirable to improve some properties of such functional components. An increasing filler material portion can, for example, produce an increase or a greater value of the thermal conductivity, of the density, of the magnetic properties, or of the screening effect with respect to electromagnetic signals and ionizing radiation. A great improvement of some properties can in particular be observed when the filler material portion is close to the theoretical maximum since the number of particle contacts increases greatly in this range. It is possible to speak of a proximity to the theoretical maximum when the volume fraction of the filler material comes close to the volume fraction of the native filler material particles with a maximum packing density. The volume fraction of the native filler material particles at a maximum packing density results directly from the particle size distribution.
On the other hand, as the filler material portion increases, the melt viscosity of the plastic compositions also rises, whereby high-filled compositions of this type are not accessible to every processing technology. Whereas molding compounds and casting compounds can be highly loaded with filler material in part at the cost of design freedom, highly filled plastic compositions are often not suitable for a processing within the framework of a variable injection molding process or extrusion process. Furthermore, some mechanical properties of the components are degraded by a high filler material portion and the highly filled components tend to be brittle.